Tears to Tiara – 10

After a nightmare of her brother getting killed, Octavia wakes up to find Riannon attending to her. The first thing she asks for is her sword because it’s her brother’s and thus precious to her, and fortunately Riannon has it nearby. Riannon also explains that Avalon is a place of refuge, so Octavia doesn’t need to worry about how she was a soldier of the Empire. Arthur, however, isn’t happy about Octavia being here and still sees her as the enemy, so Arawn forces him to determine her true nature before doing anything else. Octavia meanwhile walks around Avalon and overhears Morgan talk about the Akaeda (lit. red branch), an heirloom that she still hasn’t had any luck finding. She also meets Rathty and sees Arthur training with his sword, and she comments on his swordsmanship as rough. This causes Arthur to want to challenge her, and Octavia doesn’t back down, but Riannon arrives in time to stop the fight.

Octavia continues to act solitarily, so Riannon tries to get her to understand that it’s lonely to live life by yourself. Octavia sees what friendship means firsthand after Morgan both apologizes for not being there when she woke up and helps Octavia back on her feet. The next day, Octavia offers to teach swordsmanship to two children who have been following her around, and Arthur comes less hostile towards her. In talking with her, he learns that she joined the military after her family was killed by them because she wanted to change them from the inside. Octavia later helps Arawn and company identify some of the crates that they got from their raid, and one of those is filled with treasure. In particular, Morgan notices some red coral that resembles the Akaeda that she’s been looking for, but she claims that this isn’t it.

Seeing Morgan run off suddenly, Octavia follows her out and guesses that what Morgan was looking for was indeed coral. She also figures out that Morgan had a serious illness when she was young, so Morgan’s grandfather had probably used half the Akaeda as medicine and the other half to pay a doctor, thus showing how much he loved her. Morgan gets some solace out of this, and afterward, Arthur is grateful to Octavia, but he still wants to fight her once to determine her true nature. The two thus spar at dawn, and after a heated match where Octavia gets thrown back while successfully blocking Arthur’s charge, Arthur accepts her. In the aftermath, Octavia gives a speech about how fighting is not about killing your enemy but rather about not giving up hope and praying for peace and happiness. She also vows to share the fate of all who are there as a single swordswoman.

Preview

I know this episode gave a lot of character development to both Octavia and Morgan, but I have to say that I was a little bored by it. It’s not just that there wasn’t much action until the final moments either. Morgan’s quest was not nearly as interesting as I had hoped it’d be because it ended up being something that was relatively trivial in the grand scheme of things, and it was all over just like that. And it didn’t help either that they brought in little kids to help soften Octavia’s image since one of my pet peeves is little kids in anime, particularly the bratty variety. Of course these kids weren’t really bratty, but I still didn’t really like them, and there wasn’t anything particularly interesting about them either.

All in all, I really only found two things worth talking about this episode. The first is that, despite her explanation, I still don’t understand why Octavia would join the people who killed her family. Or, more to the point, if her goal was to change the Empire’s leadership from within the military, then she hasn’t really accomplished much other than Bubulcus, and it doesn’t seem to be the driving force behind all of her actions. The other thing this episode made me wonder is if they’re moving towards pairing Octavia off with Arthur. I thought she was supposed to be one of Arawn’s wives or something, but that wasn’t played up at all this episode. As the preview shows though, Octavia’s story isn’t done yet, and things look to be heating up again with Lidia returning. The preview also piqued my curiosity because it showed Morgan pointing her bow at Octavia, which would seem to indicate that Octavia betrayed Morgan in some way, either in the past or present.

Octavia’s motivations are the same as Suzaku’s from Code Geass. I don’t see the difficulty in understanding them. And Octavia is probably in her early 20′s. Just because she hasn’t reached the top of the military by that point doesn’t mean she wasn’t on her way. Perhaps she’d be 40 before she reached her goal, but she was going to work towards that until she got it.

People have this mentality that the manga, game, or visual novel is gospel and the anime must follow the written storyline or else its epic failure. The people making the anime use the original source material as a guideline and create their own vision of what the story should be. Its not fair to look at an anime and compare it to the manga.

A good example of that is Claymore. Everyone universally loved the series until the 26th episode when they changed the ending from the manga. But if you had not read the manga and ONLY seen the anime you would have liked the way the anime finished with closure between Claire/Raki.

@Splash I didn’t like the ending of Claymore and I did not read the manga. I don’t dislike an anime for changing from the source material. I dislike an anime that makes changes that don’t make any sense, that change the continuity and leave plot holes, that screws up characterization or that just rewrites the story badly.

The argument that it’s different from the source so don’t compare it doesn’t hold water for me if the change makes it crap. That being said, I haven’t seen the visual novel or the ps3 game and I think this is rather boring.

@Splash
Well anime tends to be dull comparing to the counterpart its based off, but that basically due to the limitations of time and budget. Hence people tend to enjoy the manga/game/visual novel more.

Also it really depends on whichever medium they come in contact first. A example would be that most people who didn’t read the manga for Claymore tends to like the anime, but those who read the manga first, already have the storyline imprinted into their head and when the anime change directions they will naturally reject it.

@Splash
but its equally unfair to simply accept the job they did in the anime no questions and go “well it was their vision”. it is fair to judge whether they did a good job or not. their vision CAN be simply bad.

actually a lot of ppl still didn’t like Claymore ending. Partly because they attempted to stick with some elements of the manga while adding in their own elements, and the end result was a big mash-up of only partial developed points and outright plotholes.

this is actually a pretty common reason why ppl don’t like rewrites. actually i’ve found when the rewrites are done well, ppl don’t mind. the problem is they usually aren’t. the mixing of the original manga/game material and new anime material, coupled with the frequent reordering of events which in and of itself screws with the development of the storyline points they did take from the original material, tends to leave the anime rewrites looking like a sloppy mess. in other words, it was simply done poorly.

and its not like none of that is noticeable if you never played the original game or read the manga. most ppl at the very least notice that things didn’t flow quite right, and when they find out its based of another medium, pretty much zero in on the above mentioned common cases of poorly mixed in new material and reordering of original material.

I hope they will pair octavia up with arthur. One thing i hated about the game was that Arawn got wives for no particular reason. He has enough wives and if they let arthur develope like they did in the game then he is going to be pretty interesting and i see why the makers of the anime would want to pair him up with octavia.

@Splash
I guess Nellie, Darkfate, and Anon have beaten the point in, but I need to put in my two cents. Have you seen the abomination known as Dragonball Evolution? You’d have to pay me to watch that movie, but based on the countless reviews I’ve read, I can solidly say that overall the movie not only strayed from the original characterization (obvious understatement), but their “vision” went down the crapper. Yeah, I know, cheap blow, but it illustrates the point splendidly.

If you translate an game/manga/novel to anime, most fans want to see it done faithfully or in ways that make SENSE. To the non-fans, sticking to source material tends to make the anime adaptation more cohesive. Look at Kyoto Animation’s works, why are they so highly rated? They stuck to the source material. Some changes are necessary for animation (censorships, timing, etc), which is understandable and in the rare cases, enhance the original source material. However, the large majority of cases, the changes are detrimental because studios try something “new” or try a “twist.”

The fact that so many people are commenting on this fact is because of the countless times where we watch an anime, which may or may not be decent, but then we go back to the source material and find the source material awesome. Source was wasted.